Item 02: Leslie William Sutherland diary, 1 January-13 December 1916 - Page 25

[Page 25]

February 14, 1916 Monday

69 wks from home.

Got up at 6.30 & received orders to stand by for a trip to a place called Behnasa-el Ghebria 55 miles from here. I got the dispatches & left at 9.35 & finally got on the road at 10.5. The going was fairly good for the first twenty miles & then after covering another two miles came on one of the 1st Regts sqdns camps at Samalut they informed me that the Regt HQs was another 3.0 mile so off again, the going now was very heavy & sandy, made Beni Mazar at 12.10 & found that I still had another 16 miles to cover before I finally got to my destination, finally got there after getting lost several times, crossed canals, deserts & ran through graveyards, the camp is in the middle of a huge graveyard & skeletons are laying everywhere, fooled around until 6.35 when I set out for

February 15, 1916 Tuesday

home without a light, made Beni Mazar 30 minutes later & had to refill there as I had not enough to carry me home, left again at 7.35, with no lights & had a rough trip to Samalut got a puncture in one of the villages & got pelted out of it, left Samalut at 8.15 & finally reached Minia at 9.10. Today I accompanied the Brig in the car to Samalut on reconnaissence & visited two of the troops in position on the desert, got home again at 7. Two planes came along today & are temporally attached to us for reconnaissance they are 100 HP Daimler Bleriot type the latest mail arrived, I got 3 from Nell & 5 from home.

Turned in at 9.30.